John Linton
.....because it is the one 'tangible' moment in each month that tells you that, despite all of your own doubts and the 'criticisms' that you receive at every other moment of every day you are in business, that you did better over the previous 28/29/30/31 days of 'business' than Exetel has ever done before. While I have little doubt that many other companies in the communications marketplace does better than Exetel does - that has never concerned me....it is a genuinely pleasurable feeling that is generated by the email summary of billing by category with its comparisons to the previous month and, above all, its total that briefly assures you that you made enough correct long, medium and short term decisions to have, once again for the 66th consecutive month, for Exetel to grow a little further.
Perhaps it reflects poorly on me that I get so much pleasure from such a short term result but I suppose Exetel is still run on the knowledge that this is a very tough industry and this is a very tough time to be in business. I have also, personally, never lost the 'back of the mind' feeling that we are a tiny start up company (although if I ever really think about it I know that this is no longer true) where 'survival at all' is still something to be pleased about and wondered at as it was in the very early times of Exetel's existence. In any event and for whatever reason it still gives me a few moments of great pleasure.
While the "GFC" (the other relatively unimportant GFC - not the Geelong Football Club) has had little/no effect on the Australian communications industry (including Exetel) in any obvious way that I can see/determine there appears to be the first signs of some effects in some parts of the results I have just looked at. Our business services grew more strongly in the past month than at at any time in the past which is partly to be expected because of the extra resources we have deployed in that area of our business but I think it is more than that. I think it is partly that more businesses have decided to reduce costs where they can given the 'straw poll' analysis of some of the accounts we acquired during the month and some of the 'agents' we acquired over the past few weeks have decided to choose Exetel rather than their long association with more expensive resellers of the identical services - I guess big mark ups are becoming harder to justify.
The other thing that 'appeared out of the blue' was the sudden decline in two of the three types of ADSL2 new sign ups during September which broke an almost seamless month on month increase while, again for no discernible reason, ADSL1 new orders virtually doubled. I can make no sense at all of that situation and, despite a comment from a reader of yesterday's blog that "1500 is as fast as anyone can usefully use" (which I would personally agree with for a non child user) the fact is that ADSL2 is lower cost because of Telstra's ludicrously high charges, to Exetel, for 1500 ADSL1 monthly connections. I have absolutely no idea what caused this and as I was away for the whole of September I didn't pick up the daily analysis so I can only look at the 'tracking' in retrospect without being able to look at what might have happened each day of September in terms of competitor activity.
Our HSPA results, while showing a reasonable percentage increase for September were also very disappointing but the explanation for that is probably known to us - or at least a contributor to it. I really don't have a clue how to address that issue and will need time to decide what to do....although time is no longer on 'our side' as it once was with two of the key plusses no longer available to us via circumstances and my own naivete - perhaps stupidity would be a better word.
Then, of course, there are the ABS figures for the first half of 2009 which, despite their somewhat dubious source, are, at the very least, an indicator that the ADSL part of the communications market is either at saturation point or rapidly nearing it. I don't know whether that is something temporary or is in fact truly indicative that growth in residential data communications has reached a hiatus for any one of a number of reasons including all the uncertainty caused by the Labor Party's 'NBN2' scam/cover up/whatever. It doesn't have much relevance as to what has caused it - only that it is a puzzlingly abrupt change in the previous scenario.
We would normally do a business plan review at the end of the first quarter to ensure that we are 'tracking' as expected and we will complete this review around mid-month. While overall revenue by product/service is tracking as expected (and profit is tracking in excess of the forecast for the first three months) there are clearly indications that thins have begun to change away from the assumptions we made only three months ago.
So, having got the benefits of the 'instant hit' of reading the monthly recurrent billing results it's back to the endless, grinding, prosaicity of trying to understand the un-understandable and then making some sorts of decisions on how to proceed from there in the hope that you might be taking, if not the best possible action, then at least not the worst.